The Great Gatsby: Writing, Publication, and Circulation

The Great Gatsby was Francis Scott Fitzgerald's third novel. He was already planning a new work in spring 1922, initially considering a setting in 1885 before ultimately placing it in New York and Long Island in 1922. Early material about the protagonist's childhood was removed and developed separately into the short story “Absolution.” These changes show that the novel's period, scope, and perspective emerged gradually during composition.

Fitzgerald's experience living in New York City and Great Neck, Long Island, supplied its social background, while he concentrated on writing on the French Riviera in 1924. After Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner in New York, offered comments on characterization and structure, Fitzgerald continued revising in proof: he moved Gatsby's experiences with Dan Cody to Chapter Six and rewrote the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel. He considered titles including Trimalchio, and shortly before publication wanted to change it to Under the Red, White and Blue, but it was too late.

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The nine-chapter novel is narrated retrospectively by Nick Carraway, recounting his experiences in the East. In 1922, he moves to New York to learn the bond business and rents a cottage in West Egg, Long Island, next to Jay Gatsby's mansion, where parties are held incessantly. Across the bay in East Egg live Nick's relative Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan. Similar outward displays of luxury surround different origins and social positions.

Gatsby uses Nick to arrange a reunion with his former lover Daisy, hoping to recover the past. The narrative does not immediately explain his origins: party gossip, his own account, and later recollections emerge in sequence until readers learn that he was born James Gatz, came from a poor family, and once lived with the wealthy Cody. The protagonist takes shape through interwoven observation and hearsay, with Nick both participating in events and arranging their story.

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At the Plaza Hotel, Gatsby asks Daisy to say she never loved Tom, something she ultimately cannot affirm; Tom also exposes Gatsby's illegal liquor business. On the return journey, Daisy drives Gatsby's car and kills Tom's mistress Myrtle. Gatsby prepares to take responsibility as the driver, but Myrtle's husband Wilson subsequently kills him and then himself.

Only a few people attend Gatsby's funeral, in sharp contrast to his crowded parties. The green light at Daisy's dock repeatedly connects with Gatsby's expectations, while the ash-covered landscape beside the road to New York contrasts with the mansions. Nick ultimately judges Tom and Daisy as people who destroy others' lives and then retreat behind the protection of money. This ending joins the collapse of personal hopes to the wealthy evading consequences, while preserving the narrator's explicit moral position.

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Scribner published the novel in New York in 1925; a Time review that year listed its price as two dollars. It did not immediately achieve the sales its author expected. Ruth Prigozy's introduction to the Oxford edition records a combined first-year printing of 23,870 copies across two printings. They had still not all sold when Fitzgerald died in 1940, with fewer than 3,000 remaining in the warehouse. Printing totals and actual sales must therefore be distinguished.

Chatto & Windus issued a London edition in 1926, while a 1934 Modern Library edition also failed to reverse its weak commercial performance. Fitzgerald had not given up: drawing on his 1940 letter to Perkins, Prigozy explains that he still hoped for a popular reprint with a foreword by someone who admired the work, bringing it back to teachers, classrooms, and literary readers.

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On May 11, 1925, Time published a short review titled “Incorruptible Yegg,” likening Fitzgerald to the clever boy in a class. It acknowledged growth in his writing while maintaining a teasing tone. This is a specific record of early reading, not a proxy for every reader's judgment. Nor should the novel's present canonical status determine retrospectively what contemporary critics ought to have thought.

The contemporary criticism assembled by Prigozy points in different directions: some reviewers admired the prose but considered the subject narrow, while others recognized its artistic achievement early on. Fitzgerald received praise from Eliot, Stein, and Wharton, but approval did not automatically become commercial success. Literary judgment, authorial reputation, and purchasing behavior did not move in step.

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The US Armed Services Editions during the Second World War gave the novel another channel of circulation. This publishing partnership distributed portable books free to service personnel. In the Library of Congress publication Books in Action, Matthew Bruccoli records the distribution of 155,000 copies of the Armed Services Edition of The Great Gatsby, compared with approximately 25,000 copies printed by Scribner between 1925 and 1942.

Bruccoli presents the relationship between the Armed Services Edition and the revival of Fitzgerald's reputation in the late 1940s as a question deserving study, rather than treating distribution totals as direct proof of causation. A book's format and the channels through which it reaches readers do change opportunities to read it. But wider exposure and the attainment of canonical status still require distinguishing the scale of circulation from subsequent literary evaluation.

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